I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

Destiny's End-Game Raids Require Five Other Friends To Play

Most of us have now experienced the first eight levels of Destiny, which contained story missions, three-player strikes, deathmatch multiplayer, and exploration. But Bungie’s Luke Smith is more excited about what’s to come after hitting the level cap of twenty, epic end-game raids. Unfortunately it seems like many players, myself included, may not get to play the most challenging segments of Destiny at all.

According to what Smith told IGN in a lengthy interview, the raids are huge, multi-hour experiences that require coordinated teams of six to play. They’ll have you face the most challenging dungeons, fight the biggest bosses, and will reward you with the best loot. Sounds fantastic, right? But there’s a catch.

“Raids are a really big bet for us,” he explains. “It’s a bit of a risk. Because the activity requires you to have a group of five other friends to play with.”

That’s right, like ODST’s Firefight before it, end-game raids in Destiny will not support matchmaking. You will have to find five other friends who own Destiny on the same console, and have parallel schedules to your own, in order to play them.

I realize this is an MMO thing, and coordinated raids among guilds happen every day thousands of times over across every top MMO out there. And while I know Destiny is trying to be a shooter MMO for consoles, this does seem pretty limiting for many players. Like the ones who don’t normally play MMOs for these exact time-based reasons.

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I was able to play a game with more than three of my friends at once, much less five. And that was usually local multiplayer for something like Halo 3 back in college. Even throughout my avid video gaming career, I’ve never coordinated some grand online play session among my friends with six of us all playing the same game, and if I couldn’t do it in high school or college, I certainly can’t do it now.

Sure, I have some friends who will be picking up Destiny. Some have a PS4, others an Xbox One, which throws a wrench into things right off the bat. But even if we did all have the same system, most of us are married or have demanding jobs or both. We just physically do not have the ability to coordinate in order to ever play something like a 6-man Destiny raid. I’m lucky if I can even pin down one of them for a few quick game of League of Legends or Call of Duty every so often, and thinking about it, I don’t even have five other game-enthusiast friends at this point.

If you do, and you’re able to set up regular raids for Destiny, they sound like they’re going to be a blast. But for the rest of us, it feels like a huge portion of the endgame being locked away because we’re not “social” enough, or don’t have flexible schedules. I imagine raids are loads of fun at Bungie HQ, where employees and game testers are rounded up and thrown into groups with ease, but out in the real world, I think that’s going to be far more challenging to orchestrate for most players.

Again, I understand this is tradition in many MMOs, and Bungie may not want to include matchmaking because these segments are so hard they’d likely be impossible to beat with even one or two uncommunicative idiots on your team. But this option of a five-friend requirement seems like a wall. And no offense to my readers, but I don’t really want to go on TwitterTwitter or GAF and hunt down six strangers to be my new gaming friends just so I can experience this content.

I’m just going to be curious to see what percentage of the Destiny audiences actually manages to wrangle five friends to experience these raids. I have to believe if Bungie sees only a fraction of their playerbase is getting to experience their most interesting and challenging content, they’ll be forced to tweak it in order for more players to be able to participate.

I know in this day and age of everything being connected and social, this may not seem like a big deal. But with the average age of a gamer ticking upward every year (it’s now 30), specifically creating content that’s impossible for your busy playerbase to access doesn’t seem like the best idea. Obviously a six-man team of headset-wearing friends would be ideal for raids, and would likely make things go more smoothly. But making that the onlypossibleway to experience them is going to prove overly exclusionary.

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I think the key is going to be Clans and just adding people who you think are good players to your friends list. During the beta I added 4 friends who were just randos that i played a bunch of the crucible with and they were good. Start doing that and between the people you add, your friends, and their friends you’ll be fine.

Hi Paul, I think the whole controversy surrounding this lack of match making is due in part to a poor choice of wording on Bungie’s end. Specifically, this quote: “Because the activity requires you to have a group of five other friends to play with…”. The use of the word “friend” implies that you need 5 other individuals who you know in the real world on the same console, with the same schedule to play with in order to even access this content. This simply is not the case. If you recall the dark days of WoW Vanilla, raids then were not 6 man endeavors, they were 40 man–you had to find 39 (*39*!!!) other “friends” to sit through grueling trash clears and over-tuned boss mechanics for a few hours at a time. Yet this did not stop myself or the many many others who ended up experiencing and ultimately clearing this content. I doubt I had even 3 whole real-life friends who played WoW to rub together at that point. More recently, when Titanfall came out for Xbox One and all my friends being of the “PC Master Race” mentality, I randomly met some skilled players in a normal pick-up match who then messaged me afterwards asking “Hey, you want to do some more games with us?” And with that we became “friends” whom I still play with today, despite never having actually met in real life. (I have known another group of internet “friends” for over a decade of playing WoW together).

Point is, it is incredibly unfair of you to lament: “Unfortunately it seems like many players, myself included, may not get to play the most challenging segments of Destiny at all.”, while then going on to say “but I don’t really want to go on Twitter or GAF and hunt down six strangers to be my new gaming friends just so I can experience this content.” (You could also play through the game regularly and meet people you enjoyed playing with along the way)

How is going to a forum of like-minded individuals (or messaging people you’ve encountered during your journeys) and saying “Hey, who wants to experience this content with me?” any different than joining a match-making pool? Ultimately you’re still going to get grouped with 5 (not six) other complete strangers who will be your “gaming friends” for the duration of the raid no? If the option exists to experience the content, but you refuse to do so on the grounds that it requires the extra effort of manually inviting 5 people as opposed to hitting a button and having the game throw you together with those same 5 individuals, why bother playing a multi-player-centric game (not to mention the most coordination heavy segment thereof) at all?

They need to relax on that shit. People have to do things between games. They may be expected to run to the store, they may have to leave the house, they may have forgotten about a previous arrangement…then you screw your group. Put matchmaking in for this event. There’s no reason not to. As for the “several hours” element, we can’t all be lifeless, shiftless layabouts, or 14 year olds with no commitments. Raids shouldn’t be any longer than a matchmaking siege missions in KOTOR(forgot what you called these events)…40-45 minutes, tops.

So you’ve never played through a traditional MMO raid like those found in EQ/WoW. That much is apparent from your comment. If this type of game play is not for you, then its not for you. Why try to insult players who enjoy this type of challenge, or demand the content be changed to fit YOUR schedule and play-style? If short (45~ min) play sessions are more up your alley, there are plenty of other things you can do, both within this particular game and others (League of Legend match?). No need to be snide or insulting just because something exists that is contrary to your particular set of preferences. Let’s try to keep things civil, this isn’t CNN.

Justin and Patrick have it right. Just add players you meet in-game as “friends” while you play through the game and level up to 20. It might not be as fun as playing with 5 of your real life friends, but you certainly won’t be excluded from the content. It also guards against wasting hours with complete randoms who could ditch your party at any time. Now that could still happen, but the chances are far less, and you’d likely be more understanding if it was someone you chose to be “friends” with who had to leave for some unexpected reason.

I see no problem with this. Doing Matchmaking in an MMORPG, you end up with not only someone without a mic but also someone who may be a little under geared, so you either leave to find a new raid, or you attempt to carry the under geared person through. I see it as annoying and I also see it as someone who really doesn’t want to put the effort into getting the gear then need to get through the raid and would rather get it now even though it hinders the team. You will meet people in the world who want your help, or people who can help you (the amount of friend requests I get during the beta don’t lie) and you will start building agreat team before the end-game. I was saying to people online “If you are looking for the typical FPS, this isn’t it, there will come a time where you need more that just FPS skill, you will also need stats and armor.” and it appears as though I was correct. There is plenty of solo content on here, but like the above states, if you want the good stuff, you will need to work as a team. It is the same as in most MMORPGs, you can stay solo and treat it like a normal FPS, or you can turn on your mic (I know it’s hard) and work with people to get better stuff to become a full-fledged Legend.

I mean, most MMO’s have several high level zones that are hard enough as it is. The extremely committed and those without jobs or any other engagements, usually already hit their friends up and attack these things in chains, and repeat them several times over…just let the dedicated stick to that regimen. No reason to release content that not everyone will play.

Yes, okay that’s fine and I totally understand and have no problems with anything that you have said…but that still doesn’t explain why the event has to be hours long. Also, I would love a keyboard support options because half the time when I’m playing, my wife wants to be able to converse/ talk to me about her day; about what we’re doing over the weekend, about what we want to do later that night and “oh my god you will never believe what Kami said…etc.” So, I am one of those that tends to not really even play with a mic anymore because over the years I have grown tired of switching it on, switching it off to comment to her and forgetting to switch it off/ on as I talk to either her or the team to where, I can end up with some pretty embarrassing “over-the-air” moments and/ or not realizing you are not talking to your team all together and that you’ve been chatting to yourself.

Eh, I’m with you. Yes, there are people for whom this wouldn’t be a big issue, but how many? Especially as this a game aimed squarely at console players who are largely not used to MMOs. Plus, this game has in other ways billed itself as not being like MMOs, for example, I remember them saying something about you wouldn’t have to dedicate your whole life to the game. I really liked the sound of that.

Ultimately, the numbers will bear out whether or not it was a good choice. For my part, I don’t really care if they keep it that way so long as there is still something else for less “social” players to do. From what I’ve seen of the game so far they have done a good job of putting a little something for everyone in and surprisingly, making it work.

You can do pvp, or not. You can do co-op, or not. It is nice to see so I hope they don’t lose that come lvl 20 and basically go “Yeah, either play with your ‘friends’ or get out”.

Query, what is the value to the company in trying to force so much interaction with “friends”? Is it because if you have a steady group to play with you’ll be more likely to play? Is it a tactic to try and get you to convince others to buy the game? I mean, it is just so grating that it seems like so many games these days just refuse to acknowledge the fact that not all of us have a bunch of gaming buddies and even if we did, we’re busy with families, jobs, etc. As you point out, there are plenty of adult gamers at this point, you can’t pretend everyone is some 14 year old with nothing else to do. I had thought Destiny understood that, this makes that less clear. Well, we’ll see. So far I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt and I was happy with the beta, so I’m hopeful.

I have a nearly maxed friends list on Xbox live over 10 years of gaming. Rarely do I see 5 other players online at any given time. Even more unlikey 2 or 3 are playing the same game. The 6 man team seems an unlikely target for casual players. Console split with 4 different platforms only complicates matters and I will probably migrate from Xbox to Playstation with the next generation, thus loosing most of my friends.

I think the real question is are you going to be “required” to do raids with five friends…What if I got 2 and we’re all bada$$es…are we gonna be able to do raids with less than 6 people…that’s the real question…

Hey Paul, If you are looking for a dedicated team of skilled players to help you with raids once destiny comes out i have quite a few people with very flexible schedules and I would be happy to let you join up with us when you have time just add me on PSN as Ajaxx_117 see you in the tower.

I personally hate ‘social’ gaming. I prefer to play on my lonesome. I really enjoyed the Destiny beta – and happily ignored everyone else I saw (except for when they waved as it is common courtesy to wave back).

I’ll be playing Destiny as a single-player game and hoping that these ‘minimum player’ requirements will not be present in many game elements. I’m not too fussed with the ‘raids’, simply because I do not have the attention span to play a game longer than an hour (ish)at a time – but I would still like to have the option to play one as the one-man-war-machine that I am.